Woman, 82, sentenced for killing roommate

San Diego  An 82-year-old woman who fatally shot her roommate last year during a confrontation in the Bay Park mobile home they shared was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison.

Barbara Ruth Brand pleaded guilty in San Diego Superior Court to voluntary manslaughter in connection with the death of Paul A. Slysh, 56. She had faced a murder charge.

Slysh was shot three times with a revolver.

According to court documents, Brand told authorities she met Slysh in 1984 when she hired him as a researcher for her real estate company. Later, after he was evicted from his home, she let him stay in her condominium.

Since 1999, Brand had continued to let Slysh — who was a paranoid schizophrenic — stay with her when he had no where else to go, she said. At the time he was shot, he had been living with Brand off and on in a mobile home on Morena Boulevard near Frankfort Street.

Brand was arrested July 12, after she called 911 and told a dispatcher she had shot her roommate. She was waiting outside when police arrived and was taken into custody without incident.

She told authorities she had gotten into an argument with Slysh when she learned he had sent a disparaging message through Facebook to her granddaughter.

Slysh accused the granddaughter of owing him money that her father, now deceased, had borrowed. Brand and the granddaughter said that was not true.

During the confrontation, Slysh continued to yell at Brand and she believed at the time that he was going to hurt her, according to the documents. She grabbed a gun and fired three times, hitting Slysh in his abdomen.

He died two days later at a hospital.

Brand told a probation officer that she feels “terrible about what happened and she regrets having the gun near her chair.”

She said she kept the gun to protect herself from transients in the mobile home park, but she never thought she would actually use the weapon.